Emily Dickinson… live! (kinda)

Emily Dickinson wrote poems on any available piece of paper, including envelopes, receipts, torn-off scraps and more.

And now readers can see her original poems online, via the Emily Dickinson Archive, which gathers manuscripts from different libraries and societies that own her work. The idea is to make available in one place the best resources for understanding and enjoying Dickinson’s poetry.

“Drowning is not so pitiful,” written in the poet’s hand, property of Amherst College.

Some of the manuscripts are tidily written poems, others seem to be early drafts, hastily dashed off on whatever piece of paper was handy.

Dickinson was a poet who published next to nothing in her lifetime, who wrote not for glory but because she felt compelled to. Scholars have found close to 1,800 Dickinson poems — more if you count different versions of the same poems.

Even today, her phrasing and sentiments often feel startlingly modern; she remains for some contemporary writers and artists a minor cult figure. (Click here to read about Dickinson’s white dress, photographed by Annie Leibovitz.)

Here is one of my favorite Dickinson poems:

We grow accustomed to the Dark

We grow accustomed to the Dark –
When light is put away –
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye –

A Moment – We uncertain step
For newness of the night
Then – fit our Vision to the Dark –
And meet the Road – erect –

And so of larger – Darkness –
Those Evenings of the Brain –
When not a Moon disclose a sign –
Or Star – come out – within –

The Bravest – grope a little –
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead –
But as they learn to see –

Either the Darkness alters –
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight –
And Life steps almost straight.

For a terrific New York Times story about the ongoing tension between Harvard University and Amherst College — the two entities that hold the most extensive archives of Dickinson’s work — click here.